History:
(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#1 - BTS) - When former All-American athlete turned engineer Patrick Carney was heading home after a
day's work at Project: Deep Freeze, he almost hit Cassandra Locke, 22nd
century historian of Reality-700, who had had been traveling
progressively back in time and had time-warped right in front of his
car. Locke, seriously wounded during her last jump, told Carney he was
to be the first of a new generation of super-heroes, telling him he'd
even start a team. After she
eventually succumbed to her injuries despite hospitalization, Locke left Carney her tachyon
belt. Unaware of the belt's full functionality, it took him a year to
use it to enhance his own strength. Calling himself the Yankee Clipper,
he had several adventures during the late 1950s, eventually joined by
his girlfriend Beverly who became the costumed heroine Liberty
Girl.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#2) - In 1958, government
agent Jacob Scott (secretly the
Skrull Velmax) assembled the adventurers Black Fox, Liberty
Girl and the Yankee Clipper to investigate a security breach at a Long
Island research facility where an alien space ship was being studied (actually Velmax's vessel he crashed on
Earth with in 1947). Joined by the Monster Hunters, the heroes
fought one of the researchers,
Dr. Schreiber, who had accidentally been turned into a monster when he
was exposed to the bio-moleculizer aboard the Skrull ship. At the same
time, the facility was invaded by Velmax's old commander Zuhn (in human
guise) who wanted the vessel for himself. Zuhn had hired mercenaries
Blackjack and the Scythe as muscle. They fought off the heroes, while
Zuhn shot Velmax with the bio-moleculizer when he tried to board the
vessel. Zuhn escaped, leaving Velmax to violently spasm, shifting forms
uncontrollably when he was found by the Yankee Clipper. The heroes took
him to a nearby hospital where Effigy was cured thanks to the efforts of
Nightingale, an enigmatic, empathic healer the Clipper had met during a
recent solo mission. Pretending that the incident had granted him
shapeshifting abilities, Velmax supported the Clipper's idea to form a
superhero team. The Clipper, who coined the name First Line (of defense)
was joined by Liberty Girl and Nightingale. The Black Fox liked the
notion, but refused membership because he planned to marry and retire from super-heroics.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#3 - BTS) - From 1958
onwards, the First Line gained traction. The team was granted government
clearances in the late 50s or early 60s, as well as the "Hideaway," a
fully equipped and outfitted base in the Colorado Rockies. The Black Fox
-- who had re-dedicated himself to crime-fighting and had adopted a more
grim costume and demeanor after the vampire Nocturne had slain his intended
fiancé, Miriam -- joined the First Line and the team accepted the Clipper's younger
brother Tim on the team as Kid Justice, albeit on a preliminary
basis.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#3) - Among the recorded cases of the First
Line (Black Fox, Effigy, Kid Justice, Liberty Girl, Nightingale) in 1961
were a confrontation with the (presumably communist) villains known as Red
Front. The team also traveled to San Francisco in the Spring of 1961 to
thwart a scheme plotted by the Yellow Claw and his associate Von
Voltzmann. During the mission, they encountered the Hipster (Fred MacRae)
and had a brief but encounter with the amnesiac Sub-Mariner
(Namor MacKenzie) who the Claw had mentally manipulated.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#4 - BTS) - By 1963, Kid Justice was
granted full membership while the First Line's rogues gallery increased
with confirmed altercations with Blackjack and Howler.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#4) - In late November 1963, the First Line
(Black Fox, Effigy, Kid Justice, Liberty Girl, Nightingale), traveled to
Dallas, Texas following an ominous premonition of Nightingale's and a
heads up from the FBI about their old enemy Howler heading there as well.
This, plus the fact president John F. Kennedy was scheduled to speak there the
next day was reason enough to worry. Howler had been hired to help the Skrull Zuhn (disguised as the polymorph
villain Chimera) steal a navigational array from a local Stark
Industries facility. The First Line opposed the villains, but at a price:
Liberty Girl was mortally wounded by Chimera, while a chance encounter
with Cassandra Locke caused the Yankee
Clipper to be shot 22 years into the future. Nightingale, caught in the
temporal tempest when Locke and the Clipper's belts interacted, was left
an incoherent mess. The First Line, beaten and demoralized by their
losses, headed home even as Lee Harvey Oswald proceeded with his
assassination attempt on JFK.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#5 - BTS) - Surviving the
loss of two of their founding members, the First Line added new recruits such as
Oxbow, Pixie, Rebound and Major Mercury (secretly
the Eternal speedster Makkari). They were also joined by Frank, a
supremely powerful yet childlike creature that resembled the classic
Frankenstein's Monster (see comments). Kid Justice, dedicated to his brother the
Clipper's heroic legacy, changed his codename to Mr. Justice and became
one of the team's field leaders. During the 1960s, the First Line went on
several undocumented missions where they encountered other super-powered
vigilantes such as the husband and wife hippie hero team Captain Hip and
Sunshine.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#5) - During 1967's "Summer of Love," the
First Line (Black Fox, Effigy, Frank, Major Mercury, Mr. Justice, Rebound,
Oxbow, Pixie) assisted Captain Hip and Sunshine in investigating strange
happenings at a music festival hosted by a woman calling herself Venus,
the goddess of love. The Nazi villain Rumor was secretly trying to get the
youth of America to revolt, causing chaos and anarchy. His scheme was
thwarted by the First Line and the visiting Asgardian thunder god Thor. In
the aftermath, the Black Fox tried to recruit Thor who dismissed the offer
claiming he had no interest in the affairs of mankind. Sunshine and Hip
also declined membership because they had just learned Sunshine was
pregnant.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#6 - BTS) - As the 1960s drew to a close,
the First Line's line up was expanded once again when the fire-generating Firefall joined. Another, far more surprising, recruit was the team's old
enemy Blackjack. The mercenary had decided to reform and was now eager to
prove himself on the side of the angels.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#6) - By mid July of 1969, the First Line
(Blackjack, Effigy, Firefall, Mr. Justice, Nightingale, Oxbow, Pixie,
Reflex) learned of an imminent threat (Skrull agents in
human form) to the Apollo-11 mission scheduled
to land on the Moon. Using the alien spaceship (actually Velmax's old
vessel) they encountered during their formative mission in 1958, the team reached the Moon
on July 20, in time to fight off Axis, Howler, Positron, and
Typhoon who had been hired by the Skrulls to act as their muscle. Howler,
Axis, Typhoon and the Skrulls all apparently perished during the conflict, while the
First Line took Positron and the Scythe back to Earth as prisoners.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#7 - BTS) - The early 1970s were
symbolized
by an influx of international First Liners. The team welcomed the Russian
defector Katyusha, as well as Scottish heroes Templar and Vulcan. Rounding
out the new recruits was Reflex who used his reverse kinesis force field to
repel enemy and ally alike. While the heroes did their duty, the
increasingly paranoid president Richard Nixon figured it was within his
authority to use the First Line against his political enemies.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#7) - Meanwhile, life for the First Line
went on as normally as possible. One of the enemies they faced during this
era was the time traveling conqueror Kang (Nathaniel Richards). The team
(Katyusha, Mr. Justice, Oxbow, Pixie, Reflex, Templar, Vulcan) fought
Nocturne and a group of his zombies disguised as the Red Skull and the
Invaders in Cleveland. Templar got married and decided to quit the
business. The Black Fox infiltrated the White House to tell president
Nixon off personally, which so infuriated the president he cut all
official government ties with the team and rescinded their security
clearances. With this move, he effectively turned the team into an
unsanctioned band of outlaws.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#8 - BTS) - President Nixon's actions
caused the team to fall apart even as he himself was brought down during
the Watergate scandals (instigated by Effigy who leaked crucial evidence
to reporter Bob Woodward as "Deep Throat"). The "Hideaway" in the Colorado Rockies was mothballed,
though members like Pixie and the Black Fox regularly went to their old
headquarters to check on the security measures they left in place. During
one of these visits around 1975, Pixie happened to be in the
communications center when a call came in from CIA agent Colby. The
intelligence operative wanted to alert the First Line their old enemy
Nocturne was active in Romania.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#8) - Pixie and the Black Fox
traveled to the Romanian town Petralova after consulting with agent Colby in
Washington D.C. Teaming up with sorcerer Stephen Strange, an old
acquaintance of the Fox, the two heroes fought Nocturne in Castle Diablo.
The vampiric villain had been holed up there in recent times, trying to
use the undying alchemist's potions to restore parts of his lost humanity.
Pixie used her petrifaction power to send Nocturne running in the end,
albeit with one hand missing.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#9 - BTS) - As the 1970s drew to a close,
the First Line was only sporadically active as team. During this period,
they welcomed two new members: the reformed super-villain Positron who
resumed her relationship with Blackjack, and Flatiron, a Detroit engineer
who built a formidable suit of combat armor in his own basement.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#9) - Some time in 1980, Mr. Justice was
kidnapped by Halwani forces following a failed rescue attempt of three
American diplomats. Under-secretary Scott (Velmax/Effigy) decided to bring
the First Line together to go and rescue Justice in Halwan. First, Scott
took the team (Blackjack, Black Fox, Flatiron, Nightingale, Oxbow, Pixie,
Positron, Reflex) to the estate of William Carmody, a brilliant
bio-geneticist had only recently become the powerful telepathic Eternal
Brain. With unusually heavy solar flares interfering with satellite
communications, the Brain's telepathy was needed to facilitate
communication during the mission. According to information Scott/Effigy
obtained through the state department, Justice was being held in the
Lion's Throne, the Halwan royal palace outside the capital of Kamillabad.
While the team was rescuing Justice, a group of CIA operatives freed
the diplomats who were held in the capital itself. However, the diplomats
had been moved to the royal palace as well and got rescued by Mr. Justice
who, after freeing himself with help from princess Khadijah, hijacked a
jet and headed for Israel. The First Line was not informed of this and
attacked the palace anyway, which led to the death of Blackjack at the
hands of the Halwani operative Scimitar (Blackjack
had tried to save the time-traveling Cassandra Locke who
herself was trying to prevent any fatalities among the heroes).
After creating a ruse (Effigy imitated
Halwan's ruler Zafina, pretending to be Oxbow's hostage), the
First Line managed to gain safe passage out of the country in time to
learn Mr. Justice had arrived safely in Israel. While visiting him at Tel
Aviv's Ben-Gurion medical center, the Black Fox was furious with Effigy
for the botched rescue mission, feeling the shapeshifter had willingly led
the team into a set up, only using them as a distraction to help
destabilize Halwan's regime. After making sure Mr. Justice was alright (thanks to Nightingale's administrations),
the Black Fox quit the team which led long time member Pixie to remark this
could really be the end of the First Line.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#10 - BTS) - At some point during the
1980s, Effigy and the Eternal Brain decided to reboot the First Line,
figuring there was still a need for them. Re-imagining the team as a loose
confederation operating more covertly rather than as tightly-knit team
like in their previous incarnation, the two started to lay the groundwork
to achieve this goal. Construction started on the Carmody Institute, an
impressive structure off the coast of Maine in New England. To help assure
secrecy, the work was divided among a great number of contractors.
However, despite Carmody and Effigy's emphasis on security, the government
became aware there was a new First Line in the works and ordered CIA
operative Nick Fury to investigate. During the construction of the
Institute, the team itself was being rebuilt and expanded as well. The
savage, volatile Yeti of the Inhumans joined, as well as the outspoken Rapunzel who used
her living hair in combat. The shapeshifter Morph was the third new
recruits, along with the Eternal Brain and Walkabout, a sentient robot
created by Carmody to increase his own mobility. Long time members Oxbow
and Pixie rounded out the new First Line.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#10) - Nick Fury tried to infiltrate the
Carmody Institute, but was easily captured by Walkabout who brought him to
meet Carmody, Effigy and Oxbow and Pixie. Their discussion was cut short
by the arrival of a small army of Deviants (led by the unseen Warlord Kro)
who bored their way up from the underground to attack the Eternal Pixie.
Fury and the First Line joined forces to fight their monstrous enemies,
even as Cassandra Locke time-jumped into the Carmody Institute. When Effigy
realized the Deviants were mostly after Pixie, he took her aside and
demanded to know why (Pixie's Eternal
origins were only known to Oxbow). Pixie's protective partner
forcefully shoved Effigy aside, which almost led to a fight if not for
Locke running in and forcing them to stop. Before they could find out who
their newest visitor was, the First Line had to deal with Yeti who had
lost control during the battle and was ripping apart the Deviants.
Rapunzel used her hair to calm him down long enough for the Deviants to
try to retreat. Not wanting his men captured, Kro "purified"
(incinerated) his forces before retreating back to Lemuria. The First Line
and Fury then focused on Locke, who -- after convincing them she really was
from the future -- proceeded to warn them about a coming Skrull invasion
she'd just witnessed several years in the future. This news greatly upset
the secret Skrull Effigy, though his teammates had no idea why. When Locke
decided to continue her journey into the past, the First Line and everyone
who met her instantly forgot all about her and her warnings (due
to a 22nd century counter measure to prevent creating divergent
realities).

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#1) - In late 1985, the Yankee Clipper
reemerged in Manhattan after being bounced across time from 1963
(following his encounter with Cassandra Locke). As luck would
have it, he ran into his kid brother who was chasing down some criminals
in an armored battlewagon through the crowded city streets. Initially
shocked to see Tim all grown up and now going himself Mister rather than
Kid Justice, he nonetheless immediately jumped into action to help him
out. After a brief, but emotional reunion the brothers Carney went to see
Bob Paine (the Black Fox, though he had
retired his costumed identity by then). Surprised to find the
First Line was by now mainly working underground, Pat Carney shot down his
brother's idea to use the Clipper's return to restore the team to its
former glory. Pat declared he wasn't ready for that and that he doubted
the world was either. Paine made arrangement with Pixie to have the
Clipper stay with the Eternals until he got used to his new life.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#11 - BTS) - The new First Line continued
to operate for several years as a covert organization. Either solo, in
smaller groups or as an entire team they went where they were needed
though they preferred to work as anonymously as possible. Over time, former
First Liners like Firefall and Mr. Justice returned to the fold, while
Walkabout received improved outer shielding that greatly increased his
combat capabilities. Yeti left the team in disgrace over something
described only as the "Rapunzel
Tragedy" and retreated to his
hideout in the Himalayas. One of the few new recruits was the enigmatic
Dr. Mime.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#11) - When Reed Richards helped capture an
amnesiac Skrull spy called Zankor, he was sent to the Carmody Institute
for questioning. However, the team (Dr. Mime, Effigy, Firefall, Mr.
Justice, Oxbow, Pixie, Rapunzel, Walkabout) was involved in multiple other
cases. Oxbow was off on a solo mission to the Rar East, while Mr. Justice
was working in the Caribbean. Dr. Mime and Rapunzel were teaming up to
deal with an unspecified case, while Walkabout, Firefall and Pixie were in
New York to take care of Nocturne and his latest threat: a mutating
Alchem-Tech virus that threatened to consume the city. Only Effigy was
available to question Zankor and by the time most of the team returned to
the Institute, the shapeshifter had learned the Skrull's mission was to
confirm whether or not the planned invasion of Earth could commence.
Effigy assured Zankor the First Line and their allies would do anything to
stop the Skrulls.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#11 - BTS) - Unbeknownst even to Zankor, a
second operative was active on Earth. The female Skrull Korya sought out
Yeti in the Himalayas and managed to befriend him to further her
goals.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#12 - BTS) - With the First Line aware of
the imminent Skrull invasion, preparations started to deal with the coming
crisis. During these years, Nocturne was able to restore himself after
the Alchem-Tech incident saw him reduced to rubble. The Black Fox was
lured out of semi-retirement by the playful, mischievous vigilante Gadfly
(T.Ruth MacRae) who harbored a not so secret crush on the aging
crime-fighter. When
the First Line members obtained sufficient evidence of the Skrulls heading
for Earth (possibly due to encounters
with Korya and Yeti), they put out a general call for help among
the supernatural community. The team asked past members such as Black Fox,
Templar and his son Squire, other allies, and even adversaries like Gadfly, Mako and
Riot-Act to help out. In the end, an undisclosed but considerable number
of Earth's metahumans boarded several space-worthy vessels to combat the
alien threat head on. However, the Skrull armada shot down at least two of
the ships, causing them to crash and burn on the Moon. The deaths of the
unrevealed passengers were briefly acknowledged by Uatu the Watcher and
Dr. Stephen Strange. The Watcher also drew the time-traveling
Cassandra Locke to his lunar abode. She decided to use her tachyon belt to
transport herself to the Skrull flagship in order to observe the battle
firsthand.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#12) - The only vessel to make it through
to the Skrull flagship contained, among others, Black Fox, Effigy, Eternal
Brain, Firefall, Gadfly, Flatiron, Katyusha, Mako, Mr. Justice, Morph,
Nightingale, Oxbow, Pixie, Positron, Riot-Act, Reflex, Squire, Templar and Walkabout;
Yeti and Korya were already aboard the Skrull flagship, and after Korya was
mortally wounded, Yeti fled with her back to Earth in an escape pod.
Unbeknownst to the heroes, the team's archenemy, Nocturne, had stowed
away to help out as well, even though he did take the opportunity to
apparently kill
the Eternal Brain and Walkabout when he had the chance. The First Line was
hopelessly outmatched by the Skrulls' superior firepower. As the final
conflict approached,
Effigy, Oxbow and Pixie were the only members still left alive. Effigy
set up a resonance overload in the ship's
warp-feed phase-shifters that would cause the engines of every ship in
the armada to explode, but was fatally shot before he could activate it.
As Effigy lay dying, Pixie finally learned the First Line's leader had been
a Skrull all along. He left it to her to throw the switch even as Oxbow
fought off the Skrulls. Just as she was about to hit the switch,
Cassandra Locke showed up to get her to stop. Not able to persuade
Pixie, Locke decided to travel into the past to inform the First Line
what was going to happen. With Locke gone, Pixie engaged the overload
that destroyed the Skrull armada and most of the First Line as well.

(X-Men: The Hidden Years I#16 (fb) - BTS) - Through
unrevealed means, Yeti and Pixie were the only (confirmed) surviving
First Line members.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#1 (fb) - BTS) - When the
Yankee Clipper used his power belt to make a time-jump from the late 1980s
to the modern era, he met up with Pixie and learned of the fate of the
First Line.

(Marvel: The Lost Generation I#1) - Because the worlds' governments had
decided to keep the aborted Skrull invasion under wraps, the First Line's
heroic last stand was prevented from becoming common knowledge as well.
This meant the team's public reputation suffered a tremendous blow, with
people feeling left and abandoned by the heroes who as far as they knew
simply disappeared one day. Early in the Fantastic Four's career
(ironically after their first fight against the Skrulls), the First Line
was mentioned by J. Jonah Jameson in his Daily Bugle editorial when he
called them "proof" super heroes could not be trusted.

(X-Men: The Hidden Years I#16 (fb) - After helping the X-Men deal with
the unstable Yeti following an unprovoked altercation near his Himalayan
home, his fellow First Liner Pixie told the young mutants what had truly
happened to the First Line. Learning the truth about the heroes of their
early childhood shook them up. Especially Marvel Girl (Jean Grey) took it
hard, recounting how her father felt as if one day their heroes had just
left them. Aware of the final, tragic finale of the First Line, the
neophyte heroes headed home.

Ahhh, the First Line, we hardly knew ye. All we got from
Earth's mightiest pre-modern heroes were twelve months of all too brief,
tantalizing glimpes of what we have missed. An assignment here, a hero
joining there, one or two skirmishes with Nocturne... Still, the
decision to base the series on established historic events is an
inspired
one. From JFK's assassination, to the Summer of Love to Apollo-11
landing on the Moon, Byrne and Stern added it all to the mix in order to
create a rich, inviting tapestry. It's truly a testament to the artists'
creative talents that they managed to make the one off style First Line
adventures, with a ever changing cast and time settings, feel like
you're flipping through random issues of a decades long comic like Avengers. One rapidly becomes
familiar with all the characters, even if they were barely more than
background players. Everyone gets a chance to shine, one can only hope
the First Line itself will get to do so someday.

However, a comeback doesn't seem all that likely. For one,
Marvel's executive editor Tom Brevoort has gone on the record to express
a particular dislike for the Lost Generation.

Asked about Marvel: The Lost
Generation on his FormSpring page, Brevoort had the following
to say: "I felt, like most, all of
the drop-in characters felt like thin, watered-down versions of other
characters, both Marvel ones and other people's, and I felt like the
premise of the series started to get bent when we got into stories
where Reed Richards was the scientist who finds the alien and so
forth-if the mandate was to build something that was going to be
tethered to a particular period in time, the real-world 1950s, 1960s
and 1970s, then it needed to be able to remain tethered there while
the rest of the Marvel universe continued to move forwards in time as
"Marvel Time" constantly readjusted itself. But mostly, I just didn't
think any of the characters or stories were all that great." Nearly forty years (at the time) after the creation
of the Fantastic Four and over 60 years after the start of the Golden Age,
it's pretty hard to come up with unique characters who aren't derivative of
others. That being said, I think there were plenty of pretty unique
characters, and the characterization made them individuals. The criticism of the stories not being that great is pretty
interesting to me, considering the stories produced by some VERY popular
writers at Marvel...for the attention-deficit-disorder generation. Flash and
shock value over substance, repetitive
panels, and repetitive dialogue without respect to characterization is not
quality story telling. I can't fault Marvel for backing writers who
consistently sell well, because, at the end of the day, it's a business. But
criticizing much more thoroughly thought out stories rings REALLY hollow to
me. And, I'm pretty certain from comments I've seen that at least a portion
of it ties to a general dislike of one of the writers.
Tethering to the
sliding timescale is another matter altogether, though. That was fine when
the series came out, but even as I write this in 2014, the characters are 14
years older than they were when the series was written. Black Fox, instead
of nearly 70 is now a full 80 in #12. Gadfly, meant to be around 20 years
old in #12 now turns out to have been 32 years old in college before she got
directly involved with the Black Fox. For Squire to have been only 16 or so
in #12, he would have to have been born in 1984, instead of shortly after
his parents' marriage. None of this is impossible, and you can concoct a
reason why each of them wouldn't be as old as they might have otherwise
seen, but it just gets less feasible and even potentially ridiculous as time
rolls on. Ultimately, I think the best solution (as pointed out by Ronald
Byrd), will be to declare as topical the meetings with Reed and anything
else tied to the modern era/sliding timescale and leave the Skrull Invasion battle
should be fixed in time around 1988...but, for now, we don't have that resolution
anywhere. What we need is a sequel...maybe Roger Stern and John Byrne will
put something together for a 15, 20, or 25 year anniversary...we can dream,
can't we?
--Snood

When asked about the various unidentified First Line
characters seen during the First Line's final battle, co-plotter and
scripter Roger Stern was nice enough to explain he and Byrne had no
additional back story written for any of those characters.

The Rumor profile in Thor: Asgard's
Avenger, erroneously notes the Venus who was involved with Rumor to have
been the siren. The Venus/Aphrodite/goddess profile in her Official Handbook
of the Marvel Universe entry confirms this to have been the goddess. The
Rumor entry is in error.
--Snood.

Additionally, it's not clear whether
Frank from the First Line is definitely the Frankenstein monster or not. The
First Line and Frankenstein Monster profiles in the OHotMU are contradictory
in this regard, with the former saying they are the same and the latter
saying it is "unidentified."
As the head writer of the Official Handbook of the Marvel
Universe at that time, I can tell you, the official policy is: Frank of the First Line is apparently either a Frankenstein monster -
meaning a creature created in the manner of Victor Frankenstein's first
creation - or just a being with a similar appearance and abilities who
adopted the name Frank due to the notable similarities. However, it as yet
remains unrevealed whether Frank is actually the original creation of Victor
Frankenstein, aka "the Frankenstein monster." Previous entries referencing
Frank as "Frankenstein monster" were unclear in specifying/clarifying this
point.
--Snood.

Skrull Fleet assault/final battle. We see that at
least three ships of First Line members and allies, etc. approached the
Skrull fleet and that at least two of those had been shot down and
crashed on the moon; we don't know how many ships took flight, and we
have no idea who were on the ships that crashed. Here's what we do know:

Of the allies and enemies, we know Dr. Strange was
not on any of the ships. We know
Cassandra Locke visited the conflict,
but escaped the fleet's destruction via time-travel. Beyond that, we
know the following allies and enemies survived into the modern era,
whether they were on the fleet or not:
Ulysses Bloodstone, Dr. Druid, Kang, Kro, Namor the Sub-Mariner, Namora,
Thor Odinson, Venus
(Aphrodite), Fritz von Voltzmann (Karl von Horstbaden), Yellow Claw
(Plan Chu)

Other characters not yet seen in the modern era,
whether they were involved with the Skrull assault or not: Mary
Carmody,
Agent Colby,
Jim Fitzpatrick,
Hipster/Captain
Hip,
Princess
Khadijah, Red Front, Rumor,
the Scythe,
Sunshine,
Typhoon,
Princess
Zafina, Zankor, Zawadi
-- essentially, we don't know whether any or all of these characters
were in one of the ships that crashed on the moon, or not. You'd think
someone would have come across the ships and checked them out at some
point. I'd say Khadijah and Zafina are pretty unlikely to be called upon
for the assault on the Skrull fleet as they weren't combatants. It's
hard to imagine they'd have considered alliances with Rumor in
particular, but they did call upon Mako, so who knows...even
super-villains may have been willing to fight for Earth itself.

Beyond individual reasons to be discussed in
individual profiles, an easy out is the escape pods. If Yeti used one, why
couldn't anyone else have done so, too?
--Snood

How could First Line and other Lost Generation Heroes & Villains survive the Skrull Invasion in Marvel: The Lost Generation#12, the answer is right in front of you---Doctor Strange and a teleportation spell (including for the crews on the crashed ships on the Moon). Surely Doctor Strange was doing more than talking to the Watcher during an invasion of Earth?--Gammatotem

The First Line received entries in the
Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Teams 2005 and Official Handbook
of the Marvel Universe A-Z hardcover#4 (2008), covered with minor
corrections/updates in Official Handbook
of the Marvel Universe A-Z softcover#4 (2012).

Several years after president Nixon forced the First Line underground
circa 1973, Effigy reunited a handful of members to go on a rescue mission
to Halwan in the early 1980s. Following that mission, Effigy became
convinced the team should continue. Confering with the Eternal Brain
(William Carmody), Effigy concluded the new First Line should be moe of a
loose federation than a tightly-knit team like its previous incarnation.
They chose the newly constructed Carmody Institute off the coast of Maine
as the team's new base of operations. The Institute was equipped with
state of the art technology, as well as individual living quarters for the
First Line and a commissary for both the team and the personnel at the
Institute. During one of their first adventures, the First Line
fought off a small army of Deviants led by Kro that had burrowed a tunnel
into the Institute to capture Pixie. That hole was later used to construct
an access way to a submarine pen.

Shortly after establishing themselves as a team, and supported by several
government agencies that gave them the necessary security clearances (and
funding), the First Line took up residence in their first headquarters
somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Nicknamed "The Hideaway," the facility
functioned as the team's base of operations as early as the Spring of
1961. The Hideaway came equipped with a meeting room, living quarters for
the individual members and a gym that sported a radiographically
controlled training robot for sparring purposes. The Hideaway's
communication facility was top notch and the hangar was large enough to
house a Skrull saucer. After president Nixon rescinded the First Line's
security clearances and turned the team into outlaws some time in
1973, the Hideaway was abandoned. The First Line made sure to secure their
base against possible looters, with members frequently checking in to see
everything was still in working order for most of the 1970s. During one of
these routine checks, Pixie answered a call from CIA operative Colby who
tried to reach the team after uncovering evidence their archenemy Nocturne
might still be alive.

Marvel: The Lost Generation I#3, Marvel: The Lost
Generation I#4, Marvel: The Lost Generation I#6, Marvel: The Lost
Generation I#8 (BTS)

This bald Skrull was seen ever so briefly on the cover of Marvel: The Lost
Generation I#1 and amidst the First Line's final battle against the
Skrulls. His true identity and allegiance remains unrevealed.

Among the many members and associates the First Line had gathered over
the years was this unidentified character who fought the Skrulls during the
team's final mission. Though, given his speed it might as well have been
the Eternal Makkari as Major Mercury (the Official Handbook of the Marvel
Universe states that both Pixie and Makkari survived the final conflict
against the Skrulls)